You saw the map on this page in TIME'S issue of July 24. That was the end of the third week of war in Korea. U.S. troops were still falling back. Their defense position was breached; on the south bank of the Kum River they were threatened with envelopment from the flanks. It was obvious that they would have to pull out of the salient around Taejon and continue to fight a long delaying action. How far would they have to retreat before they were strong enough to make a comeback against the North Koreans?

TIME'S editors attempted to answer that question with a map (herewith reprinted). It shows the week's combat zone, and the zone that U.S. troops would have to fall back to in order to hold off the enemy. The perimeter of this "Comeback Zone," as it turned out, was almost exactly the same as the line of the beachhead subsequently held by U.S. & U.N. troops. The beachhead covered the maximum area which three or four well-armed U.S. divisions plus regrouped South Korean troops could hold.

In a story accompanying the map the editors explained that it looked now like a three-phase war. The first phase was to fight a delaying action toward Pusan and establish a perimeter around this excellent port with both flanks resting on the sea. U.S. & U.N. forces, with control of the air and sea, ought to be able to hold such a protected beachhead indefinitely. The second phase was to build up U.S. strength inside the perimeter. The third phase, as outlined by the editors, was the break out from the Pusan perimeter supported by Allied amphibious attacks behind the North Korean lines.

Two months later the assault on Inchon bore out the editors' mid-July estimate of the situation and kicked off the third phase of the war.

A five-man team of TIME Inc. reporters and photographers covered Operation Chromite at Inchon. Like most other newsmen, they had a tough time of it. Correspondent James Bell, who went in with the third assault wave on Inchon and was present at the taking of Kimpo airdrome, cracked up in a jeep accident (see PRESS) and is now in a Tokyo hospital. Tokyo Bureau Chief Frank Gibney, one of the first four U.S. correspondents to hit the beach at Wolmi Island with the marines, went along with them across the Han River and into Seoul before returning to Tokyo to file copy for this week's issue. Gibney, who was injured in a Han River bridge explosion on the fourth day of the war, has been ordered home for a well-earned rest.

As this issue of TIME went to press, Correspondent-Photographer Carl Mydans, who had accompanied General MacArthur during the first stages of the Inchon operation, was with the marines on the outskirts of Seoul--as were LIFE Photographers David Duncan and Hank Walker. Duncan missed the Inchon landing when the bombers of the Far Eastern Air Forces, which he had planned to cover, were grounded by bad weather. Walker almost missed it, too, when his landing craft was rammed and nearly sunk by a South Korean gunboat on the way into Inchon harbor.

As of this week, staff writer Dwight Martin, who was a TIME correspondent in Shanghai, Formosa and Hong Kong in 1948-49, has moved up to the Seoul front. And Hugh Moffett, National Affairs editor of LIFE and a former TIME Inc. Chicago bureau head, is on his way to take over Gibney's job as Tokyo bureau chief.

Cordially yours,

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